Example.
It happens that the person has got the role of an Idol in the team. It means that all treat him with a honour, respect, awe. If the role of an Idol is acceptable to this person, then, being on this role, he does not feel emotional discomfort. Over time, having got used to the role, the one, as it is peculiar to an Idol, begins to look down at others, with a sense of superiority. The role of an Idol is fixed in features of the character. A person becomes arrogant, haughty, assumptive. He develops aristocratic manners. And he behaves like an Idol not only in the team where he was assigned the role of an Idol, but also among other people. He already can not and does not want to behave in another way. It means that the role of an Idol became a dominant of his character, became his basic I, became the essence of his soul. Such person will try to occupy a role of an Idol in any team. What if the role of an Idol is occupied by someone else? If there is already the Idol with all his dignity? They begin the fight for the role of an Idol in the team. They can’t stand each other. They have role conflicts and showdown. Everything will end when one of them will either leave the team, or will stop to apply for a role of an Idol – “will break off his hubris”.
There is a connection between the character formation of the person and the features of his body. For example, a good-natured joker is always describing fat, a cunning person with a long nose, and a smart guy with glasses. Speaking about the strong man, it is necessary to emphasize his simplicity, they will say: “Brains are not needed when you have power”. But the clearest connection of character with the features of the body is reflected in the word “grabber” and derivatives of it: “selfishness”, “selfish habits”, “self-interests”. The word “grabber” – although it is connected with fell (skin), but speaks about quite certain features of the character.
The connection between the body and the soul is not fixed. Not all idols are fat. Not all cunning people have a long nose. Not all clever people have weak eyesight. Not all athletes are simpletons. Not all grabbers have a sensitive fell (skin), etc. But all the same, the connection between the body and the soul exists.
Observed by people, and, therefore, the really existing connection of the person’s character with the feature of his flesh can be explained in a different way. However, only the fact of the existence of such connection is important for the understanding of the character formation, and its nature (the physiological mechanism) does not matter.
Well, now, at last, about the seven I – about 7 roles and about 7 types of character. Those are 7 colourful, well-recognized characters. Each person easily recognizes in them their relatives and friends and acquaintances, neighbours and colleagues. He recognizes himself, because 7 roles are 7 faces, 7 essences, 7 hypostases of each person.
The story of the roles is conducted according to the scheme: role – feeling – spiritual quality (features of the character) – behaviour (actions). In other words, feeling connected with the role, generates a spiritual quality (a feature of the character), which, in turn, generates actions and behaviour.
§2. A HERO
THE FIRE OF THE SOUL
There are people with “ardent hearts” and “ardent” souls. These are “ardent” fighters and “ardent” orators. They have “ardent” speeches and “ardent” ideas. Ardour is called “blaze”, “fire”, “fervour” of the soul, and people who have an “ardent motor instead of a heart” can be called heroes.
The role of the Hero is related to the energy of the body. People, in whose character the role of the Hero dominates, are people with increased energy, with a large reserve of vital forces. They are active, energetic people.
They are “hot” people. They do not tolerate the heat. They love the cold, the frost, the winter – like Pushkin’s Tatiana from “Eugene Onegin”:
Tatiana (Russian soul,
not knowing why)
With her cold beauty
Loved Russian winter…
They are drawn to coolness, to the water. They like swimming and other funs with water.
Water – the most mysterious liquid of nature, performs an important role in the energy of the body. Water, as a source of strength, is given much attention in fairy tales and bylines. For example, Iliya Muromets gained heroic power after the Magi give him three buckets of water. Tzar Koschei manages to find the former strength and break the chains after he drinks three buckets of water.
The Hero’s role is connected with three feelings: inspiration (excitement, courage), boredom (spleen) and tenderness (pity).
INSPIRATION
Feeling of inspiration is a feeling of excitement, passion, rapture, winged sentiments, daring, courage, drive.
Inspiration is called high spirits, called a state of lightness, freshness, vivacity. The person in high spirits goes “the flying gait”. Inspiration “spreads the wings of the soul”, gives “wiggle the wings of the soul”. This is the state of being in love – that is why they say that love inspires.
Inspiration generates such feature of the character as “soar” – the desire and ability to go beyond the ordinary, to rise above the daily routine. The feeling of inspiration generates the desire to fly.
Inspiration is a feeling of freedom. When a person has got an inspiration, they say that a person caught spirit; they say that he has a mischievous mood. He begins to improvise. He gets spontaneity and immediacy of action. He becomes unchained and liberated.
The inspiration is a creative beginning in the person. It is a feeling of sincere, creative uplift. Often during a spiritual, creative upsurge, a person rushes with “burning eyes”, not knowing what to do with himself.
The feeling of inspiration is well conveyed in the famous masterpiece of Russian romanticism – “The Song of the Stormy Petrel”.
Over the gray plains of the sea, the wind gathers clouds. Between the clouds and the sea, the Stormy Petrel flaunts proudly, like a black lightning.
Then touching with the wing the wave, then soaring like an arrow to the clouds, he screams, and – the clouds hear the joy in the courageous scream of the bird.
In this scream – THE THIRST OF WINDSTORM! The power of anger, the flame of passion and the certainty of victory are heard by the clouds in this scream.
The thunder roars. In the foam of an anger, the waves moan, arguing with the wind. The wind covers waves with a strong embrace and throws them with scope in a wild rage on rocks, breaking emerald bulks in dust and splashes.
Here he rushes as the demon, – the proud, black demon of a storm, – both laughs, and sobs…
He laughs over the clouds, he sobs with joy!
This is a courageous Stormy Petrel flies proudly between lightnings over the roaring angrily sea; that screams the prophet of a victory:
– LET THE STORMWIND WILL BE MORE STRONG!
The feeling of an inspiration generates to the desire to plunge into the storm, to bathe in it, to surrender to it completely, without a trace. In such state of soul of a person, having stretched hands, jumps in a grass, runs out during a thunderstorm under heavy rain streams, swallows of them, trying to embrace the raged elements. With such feeling fly, young horses jump on a steppe scope, puppies play and behave outrageously.
These people tend to live and act at the limit of their forces and capabilities. The principle of karma-yoga is suitable for them: “Act on the limit – and you will step over your limits”.
Heroes are people who are addicted. It is extremely dangerous to go on a car if it drives a person with a heroic character. He can not go quietly, his “eyes are burning”. He needs spirit, drive. He will definitely arrange a dashing, risky race.
People with the heroic character achieve to the extreme, emergency situations. They always go on aggravating the situation. Only in an extremely acute, critical situation, in situations connected with danger and risk, they can throw out their energy and fall under the drive, fall under a sense of excitement and inspiration.
People with the heroic character constantly reach into fire and water, get involve in fights and wars, take part in risky escapades and adventures, in riots and revolutions. They conquer mountain peaks, soar to the skies, descend to the bottom of the seas, go with a bear spear for a bear. The main thing is that they can not and do not want to live in peace. Everything that is not related to the marginal risk is for them a deadly boredom:
And he, rebellious, asks for a storm,
As if in windstorms is a peace!
Heroes are offenders, rebels, extremists, revolutionaries. Revolts and revolutions are a social storm. Heroes draw on the thick of events, in the most hell, at the very top of the attack. It is not by chance that the “Song of the Stormy Petrel” was an anthem of the revolutionary youth of the beginning of XX century.
The lot of Heroes is a deadly risk and a passion for the attack. Pushkin’s poem “Poltava” describes the feeling of fighting the inspiration of Peter I.
His eyes…
Are shining. His face is awful.
Movements are fast. He is beautiful,
He is all, like God’s thunderstorm.
…Powerful and joyful, like a fight.
He devoured the field with his eyes.
“The aspiration to danger lies in the basic of all great passions” – Anatole France said.
The attractiveness of difficulties and dangers for heroic character is reflected in one of the songs of a climbing cycle of V. Vysotsky:
Here is not a plain, here is another climate —
There are avalanches one after another.
And here behind a rockfall, the rockfall roars, —
And you can turn off, round break —
But we choose a difficult way,
Dangerous, as a military track.